Monthly Archives: August 2010

Writing these stories gets increasingly difficult. The more I travel, the more I think that what I see overseas is normal. A simple walk down the road will reveal people burning plastic garbage, little kids rolling rusty metal hoops down the slope, and busy looms under every thatched-roof hut; it all seems entirely normal, just an everyday walk. But if someone who had not traveled saw this, they might have freaked out, taken hundreds of pictures, and written pages of articles on this one walk. So I’ve been trying to see Lao life through the eyes of a fresh visitor. What would be amazing? One example: every slightly larger town has a market, and in every market are the counters where local women are selling fresh meat, waving sticks with plastic bags tied at the end to shoo away the ever-present swarms of flies.

Zall, with his camera and MAG shirt, on assignment in a tuk-tuk in Laos.

Entering the meat section, the smell of raw meat and flies floats around us like a heavy fog. The rows of stands seem to go on until they dip below the horizon. All along these stalls, piled up like mountains, is every type of fresh, dripping meat that you could ever imagine; rats, bats, cats, chicken fats, and little scraps. Everything is posed in a way to make the pieces look a little more attractive. They make the prepared dogs look like they are smiling by placing their heads towards the buyers, and then (and I don’t know how they do this), they make the bald-headed dog grimace, exposing it’s teeth and then curling the lips up. Next to the dog heads is a stack of bald forelegs, still with their paws. They burn the hair off, apparently. Their red roasts and internal organs are neatly piled to one side. Needless to say, it doesn’t look too appetizing to this westerner.

Fresh meat vendors in Laos.

The pigs faces look like they’re the happiest creatures alive. Really – you can buy a pig face in the market! They do this by skinning the entire pig face – chin, cheeks, ears, eyebrows and all – and then shape them to look happy. You can buy every other part of a pig as well – and I mean every part – kidneys, intestines, livers, hooves, tails. And some parts I still don’t know what they are. They’re all piled tidily on the plain wood counter. I’ve never seen so many different shades of red. You can even buy a pie-shaped slice of coagulated blood.

Happy pig face in Laos.

Occasionally, the butchers come up to you and offer some smelly, gray, shriveled, barbecued rats. These rats are “crucified” on thin bamboo sticks and then smoked over a fire. Their bones look to be jabbing through their hides and any meat seems to have shrunk away. Although we have been offered these many times (they seem to be especially treasured as bus snacks by the locals), when the hordes of flies jump off the rodents, leaving god-knows-what all over the “meat,” our stomachs twist and we decide it’s better to wait for fresh ones. Which we will usually try to avoid as well. Rat meat is really strong tasting, somewhere between dog and bat.

Water buffalo forelegs for sale in Xam Neua, Laos.

There are field rats cut open to show off how fresh they are, live frogs with their feet tied together, hunks of dried water buffalo skin, and rows upon rows of strange brown spices. We’ve seen piles of small black bats, fish sliced open with their hearts still pumping, and huge water buffalo legs. Sometimes there are trays of white, thumb-sized grubs or black beetles with their wings pulled off.

Fresh, Laos rats with juicy guts exposed.

To someone who had never traveled to the out-back of Asia, this would be something amazing, but to me, this is now a familiar market. So when I sit down and write these stories, I have to put myself in someone else’s shoes. I have to imagine it as if I had never seen kids chewing chunks of barbecued goodness-knows-what-on-a-stick. It also makes me wonder what in our “normal” world here in Eugene might look weird to some kid from a small Ta-Oi village in Laos or Vietnam

Our older son, Ari, is spending the summer in Sovie, Ghana, a remote town of 2000 people, volunteering with a service organization; now his days are filled with constructing a latrine at an elementary school (a 10-seater!), helping the 4th grade English teacher (who apparently knows little English), and studying international social justice issues with a small group of other fortunate young adults. Like Laos, Ghana is under-developed and struggles to provide for its citizens. One of the toughest challenges for both these countries is to ensure that its most vulnerable citizens are treated fairly, safely and with dignity. Throughout Laos (at least in the parts tourists tend to visit) are signs in English stating that child-sex crimes are illegal and that if anyone hears about or witnesses such a crime, to alert the authorities. Sadly, such heinous crimes are not unusual in Laos, Ghana, and many other under-developed nations. Ari managed to get a few minutes at an internet café and sent us a report on a vital program fighting child-slavery in Ghana:

Ari dancing with Katu villagers during their New Year’s celebration (no pix yet from Ghana!).

Today, our group visited a program called Challenging Heights. Challenging Heights was started and is currently run by an ex-child-slave named James Kofi Anan (nope, not related to the previous UN President). This program “rescues” child slaves from the communities where they were enslaved and returns them to their families. To ensure that the ex-child-slaves are getting an education that is appropriate for them and that they are welcomed back to their community, Mr. Kofi Anan has established schools that they can go to. We visited one his schools located in a town that has one of the highest rates of children who are sold into slavery in the world. The school was mostly made of cement and had random English words on the walls. Inside, the rooms were separated by simple walls of cardboard. Despite the limited funding and difficult learning atmosphere, the children were almost all literate in English (even at the first and second grade levels) and were studying math, science, government. This school seemed to do an incredible job.

After visiting the school, we shared a lunch with Mr. Kofi Anan. He described in great detail many of the abuses that he had to suffer. These abuses were physical, sexual, emotional, verbal… His speech brought me near tears and made me really think about the situation that so many children are being forced to live with in Ghana and elsewhere. He also told us that many of the child-slaves whom he rescues are in the same area as Sovie. This brought to mind images of all of the children who I have taught and worked beside being whipped and sexually assaulted before they go out to labor endless hours on Lake Volta fishing. It’s hard to say all that I want to with a simple email. Words are insufficient when it comes to describing feelings like the ones that I experienced while working with Mr. Kofi Anan. The best image that I can conjure is of a boy I saw sitting at the school. When I asked why the boy was not playing with everyone else he said, “My head is spinning.” This was a result of the abuse that he suffered. This boy is now unable to be a full participant in games, even in a school that was specially designed for children who have suffered like he has.

By virtue of being at the right place at the right time, Above the Fray is privileged to have acquired a huge, museum-quality, window-rumbling, Jarai Rong House drum. Over each end of this drum stretches a taut, thick water buffalo hide – one side is from the hide of a male, the other a female. The hide was originally tacked on using only bamboo pegs, although a few nails were applied some years (generations?) back to hold one section of hide tightly to the frame. Under the hides and hidden from view – save a 2 inch wide strip in the middle from which the drum hung – is an ancient hollowed tree trunk giving the meter-wide drum its frame, and echo.

Josh wakes the neighbors on the Jarai Rong House drum.

The 200 lb. drum (carefully shipped home in a custom-made, 1.5 m3 padded wooden crate) is thought to be 150 or more years old. We were told it was obtained when two villages merged, and the extra drum was sold to help develop the newly expanded village. We continue to search for any knowledgeable articles and research on Rong Houses, and specifically Rong House drums.

A close-up of the center of the drum, where the decades of wear on the wood have brought out the grain, and the holes in the water buffalo hide, some pegged by bamboo “nails,” are visible.

Our translator, Mr. Vinh, smiles proudly as we arrived at his small village an hour outside the city of Kontum in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. The Bahnar village is nestled in a lush copse near the river; large leaved trees protect us from the harsh, hot sun. The ground is packed dirt, and the dogs, pigs and children wander freely between the small homes that alternate thatched and corrugated metal roofing.

Mr. Vinh with his daughter at the loom.

First we visit Mr. Vinh’s adopted daughter, a talented weaver who has a physical disability. She sits under a shaded porch at her loom, a beautiful long cotton shawl half-created in front of her. Mr. Vinh points out the modifications of the loom that allows his daughter to fold her awkward legs under but positions her to fully operate the loom’s complexities. “She has such talent,” he beams. “I had a special loom made so she can work even if her legs won’t.”

“Now you must see our village’s Rong House.” I must have misheard him – “We’re going to the wrong house?” “Our communal house,” he clarifies. “The place where our village gathers and celebrates.”

Maren in front of the Bahnar Rong house in Mr. Vinh’s village.

The immense thatched-roof structure in the village’s center couldn’t be missed. Rong houses are shaped like thick axe blades, with steep-sloped sides and a long sharp ridgeline up to 50 feet off the ground that is decorated with buffalo horns or other ornaments. The building is rooted to the ground with nine thick hardwood logs that lift the 30’ x 15’ bamboo floor about five feet off the ground. A five-step ladder carved from a tree trunk invites us up to the entrance. Some Rong houses have a low railing and open sides to let the warm jungle breeze flow right through; this Bahnar Rong house has tight-fitting bamboo walls fully enclosing the open space, leaving the interior dark and, by afternoon, pretty steamy.

Men in a Katu community house during their New Year’s celebration in Laos – see the gongs?

Both in and outside some Rong houses (and other community houses in Laos), village artists have carved wooden animal figures both into of the wooden structure’s frame or as stand-alone decorations – sculptures of birds, monkeys, eight-pointed stars, the sun and humans. The carvings symbolize myths of ancient deeds and spirits as well as daily village and farm life. Some of the figures are brightly painted. A large two-sided drum hangs from an animal-hide strap ready to call the villagers to an event or meeting. Tucked into a back corner are brass gongs, crossbows, ceremonial shields, clay flasks of wine, and other ritual wares awaiting their next use. A large flat-stoned fire-pit, used for ritual cooking as well as lighting up the town’s faces as an evening story is told, dominates the middle of the room. The house itself contains no metal. Joins are cut very carefully and the bamboo scaffolding and thatched grass for the roof are tied with strips of rattan.

Inside the community house in Attapeu Province in Laos – note the fire pit on the bamboo floor!

Mr. Vinh points to a painted line that goes down the length of the interior. He waved his hands to the right: “The unmarried men and boys are on this side,” he announces, and with a wave to the left, “the unmarried women and girls on this side.” Then he squints his eyes a little and lowers his voice. “Sometimes a girl goes over to be with a boy on the boys’ side, but the boys can never go to the girls’ side.” I swear I catch him winking at me. Mr. Vinh suddenly straightens up: “We have a big Rong house, because our village has good land and many people. The taller the Rong house, the more powerful the men of the village, and the easier it is to find the village when hunting or farming away from town, as the tall roof can be seen from some distance. Some villages have small Rong houses. But no matter – every Rong house is the heart of a village – the place where the seasons, and births, and marriages, and even death is celebrated.”

A Bahnar Rong House in Kon Tum, Vietnam.

In our visits to several ethnic groups in the Central Highlands – Bahnar, Sedang, Jarai and others – we find Rong houses of similar design and pride. Some groups build two community houses – one for the men, another for women. Regardless, the Rong house embodies the blood, sweat, tears, pride and past of the village members and their ageless ancestors; it is the physical center for a village’s heritage, power, and future. Tradition holds that a human soul only becomes whole when it joins the village soul, and the Rong house is where the members of a village and the spirits of the ancestors and nature come to respect and negotiate a proper balance.